LG Flatron L1980Q LCD: Good for gamers, decent for DVD playback.
Written: Jul 26 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Low response time (8ms), Competitive price.
Cons: Pivot feature not really that useful to gamers.
The Bottom Line: A decent 19'' LCD monitor that should be an excellent choice for a casual gamer and/or PC home user.
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| maza's Full Review: LG L1980Q (Black, Silver) 19 inch LCD Monitor |
My 19’’ Nokia CRT monitor after 4 years of heavy duty service died at July 3rd 2005. It was a short funeral attended only by me. I carried to corpse to the garbage bin and ceremonially disposed of it. The whole process was tiresome, the corpse was too damn heavy. Oh well, time for a new monitor.
What I needed
I spent too much time on my PC, mostly playing online games, or browsing the net. I recently moved in a new house, and my new desk has a lot smaller surface, therefore a I had to switch to a flat monitor. However, I was used to my old big CRT, and as a result I wouldn’t settle with anything less than a 19’’ flat monitor. Now, usually flat monitors are either good for graphic application such as Photoshop (range of colors, high refresh rates) or good at watching DVDs (deep levels of black, making the colors more lively) or good at games (low response times, measure in ms). Anything below 12 is acceptable, although monitor vendors claim that 16 is acceptable too, but don’t believe them. They only want to take your money after all. If the response rate is too high, then a fast moving object will leave a trail behind, this is called ghosting, and you don’t really want it when you play games.
However, I wanted my new monitor to be able to BOTH handle games AND have a good quality DVD playback. LG’s Flatron L1980Q was what I wanted. Excellent for games, and good for DVD playback. It was also very cheap compared to other monitor of the same range. There are better 19’’ monitors out there, but the price difference makes this one the best buy for me. I don’t even think I could tell the difference anyway.
Features
The monitors specification are a 0.294mm pixel pitch, contrast ration 500:1 and 250 brightness. Native resolution is the standard 1,280 by 1,024 pixels at 60hz or 75hz refresh rate. It also supports both analog VGA and digital DVI-D. Also, it includes a plethora of any cables that you will ever need and a wall mounting bracket, however, which many rivals omit.
L1980q’s strong point is its low response time (8ms) but it also has more nice features. It has a very flexible stand. Actually it can bend over backwards, making it useful for shopping counters or conference tables, but I doubt I will ever use this feature, unless the wall facing me is interest in watching a DVD sometime. The screen can also be rotated to a portrait or landscape view. Of course there is an automated function that switches the display accordingly, or else it wouldn’t be too useful.
Guarantee
What made a big difference to me, and finally convinced me to purchase this particular LCD monitor was the ֭ years, zero dead pixels’. Every other rival manufactured offered a ֭ year, five dead pixels’. I really wanted to avoid having to stare at black spots in my monitor. I was told that they don’t look that awful and you barely pay them any notice, still it annoyed me.
It’s not the best out there, but it’s better than the average LCD monitor. And cheap.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 550
Operating System: Windows and Macintosh
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Epinions.com ID:
maza
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Member: Nick Maza
Location: Greece
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 13 members
About Me:
I live in Greece. I hate the summers.
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